The invention relates to the machining of formations, such as gear teeth, spaced along a path having a predetermined curvature.
The grinding of gear tooth flanks is presently carried out on conventional machine tools with which problems arise in the machining of large gear wheels. In prior gear forming machines, the tool and workpiece are guided or fed relative to each other along curved paths having a common center of curvature so as to limit the maximum distance of the tool from the center of the formation path and therefore also the maximum size of the workpiece to be machined.
Workpieces having a machining formation path of a diameter larger than that accomodated by the conventional in-house machine tool have required the acquisition of expensive, special machines for infrequent use on larger workpieces with high investment costs and space requirements so that production costs become excessively high. Furthermore, the special machines for large workpieces did not even contribute significantly to improvement in machining precision, because of the large tool and table travel distances involved and the larger tolerance errors associated therewith. Also in view of the lack of precision the less demanding use of the special machines by preliminary machining of smaller formations on larger workpieces became more difficult.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to enlarge utilization of machine tool arrangements accomodating the prevailing workpiece dimensions by also accomodating with precision workpieces considerably larger than those capable of being handled by conventionally equipped machines, with only insignificant loss of time for adjustment of control movements.